Question Cooler master hyper 212 Evo + Ram issues

[Gfost73]

I am writing this to see if this is a common issue as well to maybe help others who may experience this issue. recently a friend upgraded his CPU cooler to a cooler master hyper 212 Evo, and all seemed to go fine during the instillation of the unit, however (unnoticed for a week or so ) the RAM on the system was only using half (4Gb of 8Gb), keeping 4GB as "hardware reserved". he brought the machine to me thinking perhaps he had bad ram, motherboard ,CPU or something, as it seemed odd that windows recognized all 8Gb but only used half. My first step was to make sure the Ram was good, so I popped it into a test machine I have, and sure enough no issues with the RAM as it worked fine on the test, I then thought maybe it was the mother board or CPU having a malfunction, at this time I removed the CPU cooler as I was going to reseat the chip and check for any bent pins, I didnt really feel this was the issue however as the CPU was never removed, but I figured it couldn't hurt, So I reseated the CPU and lightly placed the cooler on top (as I figured I was going to have to replace the board I didnt tighten the Cooler down at all and just booted into the BIOS to check memory) to my surprise all 8Gb of ram were now showing in the Bios., so I then thought , ok maybe the chip somehow became loose and all was good now, so I went ahead and tightened down the cooler, to then be shocked again that only 4 of the 8GB of Ram were being used, at this point I think I solved the issue with the Cooler being too tight, so I loosened the screws holding it in place, using a star pattern I slowly loosened each several turns, and presto all the RAM was then showing and working fine. I am curious if anyone else has had similar issues with this cooler? Ive built many PCs over the years and , well this is a new issue for me to add to the list of whacky things PCs do.. anyways I hope that maybe if anyone else is experiencing issues with Hardware reserved RAM or RAM not being used, well maybe this will help them out, as it is a strange issue I myself have not had to deal with (until now)

 

[ko888]

What's the brand and model of the motherboard?

Over-tightening the CPU cooler can warp some motherboards.

 

[Gfost73]

Gigabyte GA-78LMT-S2 I do believe , it seems to be stable and working well now, but like mentioned the screws are not fully tight (or bottomed out) I even examined the board under magnifying glass to see if maybe there were ant cracks etc and there is no indication of any cracks or broken leads, as well no bent or broken pins on the CPU . I just found this to be a very odd issue as Ive never had it happen in the past, n as mentioned Ive built several machines over the years, some literally from garbage parts ive refurbished or repaired.

 

[ko888]

There could be hairline fractures in the solder joints under the CPU socket.

 

[Gfost73]

perhaps, but from what I can tell, viewing as much as I could I did not see any cracks or fractures, and I guess as everything is working fine now, with CPU temps around 7 degree Celsius and only peaks at 25 degree under full load, using prime 95 for a few hours) . I would conclude the issue is fixed, even if the cooler isn't 100% as tight as the screws will go., its not "loose" as in doesn't wiggle around or fall out of place etc, its just not 100% tightened down as much as screws will allow.

 

[ko888]

It would be impossible for you to examine the solder joints under the CPU socket unless you have x-ray vision. The CPU socket is a surface mount device. There are little solder balls on the bottom of the CPU socket that are usually wave soldered to the solder pads on the topside of the motherboard.